AltaVista
Shares rank 13 of 38 search engines by recommenders
Fast, free search with real boolean operators, literal phrases and near and wildcard options that many miss today. Critics say results were noisy and took heavy sifting.
Fast, free search with real boolean operators, literal phrases and near and wildcard options that many miss today. Critics say results were noisy and took heavy sifting.
38 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 24
- criticize it
- 14
- approval share
- 63%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 24 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.7 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Best of the pre-Google engines
“AltaVista was the best of the pre-Google search engines”
Comment from 2 May 2026 in “Ask.com has closed” “Altavista was the best of the bunch to my recollection”
Comment from 9 Jun 2026 in “Old'aVista – The most powerful guide to the old Internet” “the only really credible search engine prior to Google”
Comment from 2 May 2026 in “Ask.com has closed” - Comment from 2 May 2026 in “Ask.com has closed”
- Comment from 7 May 2026 in “Ask.com has closed”
Advanced operators and literal search
“Full boolean operator search with "literals" actually respected, negative search terms worked as advertised”
Comment from 2 May 2026 in “Ask.com has closed” “It had fairly sophisticated search options that Google never got like stem and wildcard searching.”
Comment from 2 Apr 2026 in “SpaceX Files to Go Public” “I like boolean and literalism etc., I like control and syntactic precision”
Comment from 2 May 2026 in “Ask.com has closed” - Comment from 2 May 2026 in “Ask.com has closed”
Better results than modern search
“It really seems that I was getting better, more-direct results from Altavista 30 years ago”
Comment from 6 Jun 2026 in “What was your "Oh Shit" moment with GenAI?” “Alta Vista had more relevant search results than Google has now.”
Comment from 2 May 2026 in “Ask.com has closed” “No modern search has ever matched that, again.”
Comment from 2 Jun 2026 in “Anthropic confidentially submits draft S-1 to the SEC” Free, fast and less cluttered
“AltaVista was always super fast--it never had the advertising bloat that the other ones had until the very end.”
Comment from 1 Jun 2026 in “Anthropic confidentially submits draft S-1 to the SEC” “Altavista was like the 'free' version of what some libraries had for via paid search subscriptions.”
Comment from 3 May 2026 in “Ask.com has closed”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Too many irrelevant results to sift
“just doing keyword matching, and of course you would therefore have to wade through pages of results”
Comment from 4 Dec 2025 in “Anthropic taps IPO lawyers as it races OpenAI to go public” “AltaVista required a lot of looking through results to find the right thing”
Comment from 3 Dec 2025 in “OpenAI declares 'code red' as Google catches up in AI race” “you'd have to dig into page 8 before getting to the good stuff”
Comment from 3 Dec 2025 in “OpenAI declares 'code red' as Google catches up in AI race” - Comment from 25 May 2026 in “Search engines alternatives now that Google isn't Google anymore”
Ranked below Google's results
“It is absolutely insane to say that Altavista was better than Google though.”
Comment from 2 May 2026 in “Ask.com has closed” “We all ditched AltaVista because Google was incredibly better.”
Comment from 19 Feb 2026 in “Anthropic officially bans using subscription auth for third party use” “Google search was way better than yahoo or altavista”
Comment from 9 Jun 2026 in “Ask HN: Which companies gained a competitive edge purely via engineering?” - Comment from 27 Nov 2025 in “OpenAI needs to raise at least $207B by 2030”
Cluttered with ads
“Even the ads they had later were much cleaner compared to yahoo, altavista, lycos, aol”
Comment from 1 Oct 2026 in “Gemini 4 Argon” “a major reason for switching was that the search itself got cluttered up with ads”
Comment from 2 Apr 2026 in “SpaceX Files to Go Public” Slower than rivals
“Yahoo, Lycos, Excite, Alta-Vista were still loading”
Comment from 1 Jun 2026 in “Anthropic confidentially submits draft S-1 to the SEC” “Alta-Vista was visibly slower”
Comment from 3 Jun 2026 in “Anthropic confidentially submits draft S-1 to the SEC”
Other search engines people recommend
The four most recommended other search engines, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kagi | 732 | 234 | 76% | 13 | 2 yrs106 owners | Approved |
| Google Search | 315 | 1,039 | 23% | 12 | 20 yrs25 owners | — |
| DuckDuckGo | 286 | 204 | 58% | 12 | 3.5 yrs47 owners | — |
| Hister | 81 | 9 | 90% | 9 | 2 mo17 owners | Approved |
| AltaVistaThis page | 24 | 14 | 63% | 5 | — | — |
What people said
36 of the 42 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Even the ads they had later were much cleaner compared to yahoo, altavista, lycos, aol”
“Altavista was the best of the bunch to my recollection”
“Google search was way better than yahoo or altavista”
“It really seems that I was getting better, more-direct results from Altavista 30 years ago”
“We were big AV users initially, I think for 2 years?”
“Alta-Vista was visibly slower”
“No modern search has ever matched that, again.”
“it's absolutely the case that we let the index get stale”
“AltaVista was always super fast--it never had the advertising bloat that the other ones had until the very end.”
“Yahoo, Lycos, Excite, Alta-Vista were still loading”
“every search engine has had since Altavista”
“AltaVista had so much noise that it was basically unusable”
“For me AltaVista was superior.”
“Altavista was like the 'free' version of what some libraries had for via paid search subscriptions.”
“I like boolean and literalism etc., I like control and syntactic precision”
“The "near" operator was gold.”
“It is absolutely insane to say that Altavista was better than Google though.”
“It worked pretty well on early google and altavista.”
“AltaVista was the best of the pre-Google search engines”
“AltaVista and HotBot for me”
“Alta Vista had more relevant search results than Google has now.”
“This is a feature still unmatched by any search engine today.”
“Full boolean operator search with "literals" actually respected, negative search terms worked as advertised”
“the only really credible search engine prior to Google”
“AltaVista was perhaps the best”
“Altavista was kind of okeish for search”
“a major reason for switching was that the search itself got cluttered up with ads”
“It had fairly sophisticated search options that Google never got like stem and wildcard searching.”
“used shit like askjeeves, altavista, et. al.”
“We all ditched AltaVista because Google was incredibly better.”
“Going to altavista still works great though”
“just doing keyword matching, and of course you would therefore have to wade through pages of results”
“AltaVista required a lot of looking through results to find the right thing”
“you'd have to dig into page 8 before getting to the good stuff”
“I quite liked AltaVista but I never went back to it after using Google either”
“They sucked compared to Google.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.